Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 82077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Hannah and her friends had been dancing on the second floor, and the stairs, which were rusted metal, crumbled with the heat. There was scaffolding on the other side, and Hannah had tested it, found it sound, and had her friends take that out the back of the building, which was not engulfed in flames.
It soon became clear that the best way out was up the scaffolding and over what were large pieces of limestone, and down the other side. Even after her friends were safely out, Hannah stayed and directed others, helping those not great at climbing, telling some to take off their shoes, just leave them there, and remember the jungle gym from elementary school. She lifted and pushed, yelled herself hoarse, and remained there until the flames were much closer than she thought they were. When the scaffolding caught fire, she lost her grip and fell, catching herself at the last moment on a wide metal beam that she couldn’t hold on to for long.
“I could have fallen at least twenty feet, if not more,” she said, her voice flat, lifeless. “It was so lucky that Jake was there.”
“You saved her,” I said.
He winced. “I’m sure she could have done some amazing Cirque du Soleil maneuver and figured out how not to hit the ground, but––”
“No,” she corrected him, her eyes soft as she looked at him. “You were amazing.”
His smile was warm. “I’m just glad I was there.”
“Me too.”
“I like being your safety net.”
She nodded.
“Let’s maybe not fight anymore. What do you say?”
“I say yes,” she said, easing her hand from mine and offering it back to Jake. He took it in both of his. “We were friends before. Let’s be that again. I miss you being my friend.”
“Me too,” he whispered, and there were tears in his eyes, and they ran through the soot on his cheeks.
I thought she would cry too; she normally did, quite a bit, like me, at the drop of a hat. But at the moment, she wasn’t herself. Whatever had happened when she was focused on helping, saving others in the face of something truly terrifying, had done something to her.
I agreed with the nurse that she was in shock, but I was also afraid that something else, something deeper, had taken hold. I was scared. I wanted her to be herself, but even with me hugging her, Jake holding her hand, and her brother close, it didn’t seem as though we were giving her what she needed.
“Hannah!”
The bellow was, as usual, loud. It reverberated through the ER, even with lots of people there and the noisy chaos of a large influx of wounded. But Sam wasn’t the kind who allowed himself to be given directions, and neither did he ask for them. No one had ever accused him of being patient. Sam never said excuse me, pardon me, or waited to be given attention when dealing with any kind of emergency pertaining to me or his kids. In normal situations, certainly, he was a gentleman. He would move slowly through a crowd. But now, with Hannah hurt, and him not knowing the extent of her injuries, he was like a bull. He charged ahead, and he could get a lot of volume from that diaphragm of his. And people did what they always did and got out of his way.
What was extraordinary, though, was that she jolted in my arms. I let her go because she reacted violently to her father’s voice. She let go of Jake and straightened up, turning her head at the same time her breath caught.
I understood. I had the same reaction to him. You needed to be alert and ready to speak to Sam Kage when he appeared. Not speaking to him was bad. He needed immediate assurances if you didn’t want the bellowing to continue. What that meant was that you needed to get out of your own head and speak up or you’d scare him, and heaven forbid that were to happen. Because if you worried him, that was it for you. Be prepared to be placed under glass for the foreseeable future. Best-case scenario, you sucked it up and pretended to be just fine.
When the curtain was nearly wrenched off the rod around the bed, I realized that Hannah wasn’t getting ready to tell her father that everything was hunky dory. The exact opposite was about to happen.
“Daddy,” she whimpered, and the floodgates opened and she was sobbing. Jake and I both moved back to make room for him; it was best not to be caught in the hurricane he was.
He rushed to her side, took her little face in his hands, looked her over as she bawled, and then wrapped her in his arms, basically smooshing her face to his chest, tucking her safely against him.